Poetry. "Myrna Stone, in HOW ELSE TO LOVE THE WORLD, seems to ask what can redeem 'the addle and dross the hours devise' (her fine phrase from the title poem). One answer the book provides is 'this carnal life,' whether manifested in human touch or on painted canvas ('stroke of flesh and brush'). The scenes depicted may be tawdry or elegant, voluptuous or corrupt, but Stone's writing is always crisp with precision and civility. Her forms are as diverse as the painters she calls up, from Bruegel to John Singer Sargent. Reading Stone, I think of John Donne. Like him, she delights in wit and desire and the sweet coupling of word and word"--Elton Glaser.
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Editorial Reviews
From the Back Cover
Myrna Stone, in How Else to Love the World, seems to ask what can redeem "the addle and dross the hours devise" (her fine phrase from the title poem). One answer the book provides is "this carnal life," whether manifested in human touch or on painted canvas ("stroke of flesh and brush"). The scenes depicted may be tawdry or elegant, voluptuous or corrupt, but Stone's writing is always crisp with precision and civility. Her forms are as diverse as the painters she calls up, from Bruegel to John Singer Sargent. Reading Stone, I think of John Donne. Like him, she delights in wit and desire and the sweet coupling of word and word.
--Elton Glaser
" ... what solace / is a life without ardor?" asks the poet, who then counsels the sensualist in herself, "Put your mouth / to its service and breathe." Through formal gestures and voluptuous language, Myrna Stone praises the pleasures of the world, whether they arise from "the body's ambition" or from the mind aroused by discipline and art. How Else to Love the World is a book of fierce and passionate engagements.
--Michael Waters
From the opening poems, including especially "Incarnadine," . . . to the sixteen sections of "Elements of Desire," . . . the reader is increasingly aware of falling under the spell of a poet whose relationship with the world is passionate, even romantic-lover and beloved--and whose way with language is sensuous, often erotic, and palpably physical.
--B. H. Fairchild, from the Introduction
About the Author
Myrna Stone is the author of HOW ELSE TO LOVE THE WORLD, The Art of Loss, and THE CASANOVA CHRONICLES. Her work has appeared in such journals as Poetry, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, Boston Review, and Massachusetts Review, and in five anthologies, including BELOVED ON THE EARTH: 150 POEMS OF GRIEF AND GRATITUDE and Flora Poetica: The Chatto Book of Botanical Verse. She is the recipient of two Ohio Arts Council Fellowships in Poetry, a Full Fellowship to Vermont Studio Center, the 2002 Dr. O. Marvin Lewis Poetry Award, and the 2001 Ohio Poet of the Year Award.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
An anthology of original free-verse poetry in forms ranging from stanzas to stream-of-consciousness near- prose,
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: How Else to Love the World (Perfect Paperback)
Award-winning poet Myrna Stone presents How Else to Love the World, an anthology of original free-verse poetry in forms ranging from stanzas to stream-of-consciousness near- prose. At times sensual in its celebration of desire, at times burning with ambition and vivacious joy, at times revealing the darker side of yielding to impulses, How Else to Love the World is a most deliciously nuanced offering from cover to cover. "Yes": Flatterer, / little arbiter / of assent / and admission, you cross our lips / with a sycophantic lisp / that Eve heard first / from the mouth / of the trickster, / that maw of tongue / and jaw, of japery / and spleen, into which / she looked just once / perceiving nothing / of consequence.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Simply Outstanding,
By Richard Attanasio (Cortlandt Manor, NY) - See all my reviews
This review is from: How Else to Love the World (Perfect Paperback)
It is essential for anyone who is literate and human to experience these poems. It is easy to say what these poems are not. They are not "confessional"; this poet does not burden us with the intensity of her own emotions triggered by the common or unusual thrills and horrors of living. Myrna Stone's poems are not obscure; she does not torture her reader with poems whose meaning, if any, is buried beneath fragments or constructions of language that do not communicate.
These poems are rich, brilliant, wise, engrossing, educational, thrilling, deeply satisfying, Every line in every poem is a surprise at the same time that it is absolutely appropriate in its place. Ms. Stone's command of her language is absolute, and absolutely pleasing to see and hear. Her vocabulary is huge, her range of knowledge no less so. I can't present a favorite poem or favorite line: this is a stanza chosen literally at random: Here Bruegel offers us grain as allegory, as a rich bullion load of light under a sapphirine, Netherlandish sky, and the next continues his clever corruscation he sets burning on hillsides and proceeds. Trust me, this level of intensity does not diminish anywhere in the book. The language throughout is this rich, the perceptions this sharp, and their communication. Here are a few more phrases, again chosen at random: "...who is filling up, like these rooms /with music, from the inside out," "a ransom's weight of welted fox," "or unctuously unclothed," and "brains empty as clapperless bells." In the context of their poems, in the context of this book, these lines dazzle a first reading, and after several readings. The lines from the stanza above come from the third section of the book, which are responses to works of art, ekphrastic poems. The second section relates various aspects of lives' endings, but characteristically in totally original ways. The first section, in which the poet warms up, loosens her muscles as it were, holds meditations on words, for example, "Incarnadine," "Yes," "Maybe," and relates straightforwardly, but characteristically with great originality, thoughts on cows, wild onions, a young man's forthcoming marriage, late love, and, as a surprise, an address "To the Men I Never Slept With," the only poem in the book where "I" appears. Ms. Stone is a master craftsperson, as I've said. Fans of form will find a triolet clearly labeled, and will easily recognize at least one sonnet, a villanelle, and a pantoum.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Myrna Stone is back,
By
This review is from: How Else to Love the World (Perfect Paperback)
Just when you think Myrna Stone can't write poems any better, her new book HOW ELSE TO LOVE THE WORLD puts that notion to rest.Her keen sense of form, unlike so many poets of that style who are cold as ice,launches her poems of wit, intelligence and eroticism--the precision always human and often beautiful.This book is a must for your Myrna Stone collection. If you haven't started your collecting, by all means do so, now--it will be one of your best investments.Let Myrna have the last word:here's her title poem: How Else to Love the World How else to love the world but rise each morning from the bed of your making into the addle and dross the hours devise. How else to love the world but to rise as though order is the ardor that drives this life between waking and waking. How else to love the world but to rise each morning from the bed of your making.
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